Dreams of Shadows, Patrick Sean Lee [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

away. No longer one of us. I wept in my heart. Another casualty. My confusion and distrust of the invading hoard turned into a feeling of hatred for them and what they’d done, despite Mari’s words in their defense. She was so young. Why her? It was worse than unfair, it crushed me to see what she’d become at their hands.

Helplessly watching her walk slowly away, I vowed to find a way, if it took me the rest of my life, to destroy them.

 

                                     *

 

The days ahead crept onward sluggishly. Conversations were limited to often-boring, small details of our past lives before the catastrophe, or what we needed in order to survive the next day or week that would have to be scrounged from the nearby farms, and from Marysville. Munster spent a good part of each afternoon away. He and Peter. They didn’t say as much, but I was certain that their forays outside our little compound included searching for any sign of Mari. Cynthia, Jack, Lashawna and I scrubbed and polished the interior of the house until not even a mote of dust could be found. On one of the expeditions into the stench-filled city, the men had hauled a truckload of musical instruments back. Jerrick fell in love with a cello that Charles and Peter had stumbled onto at the symphony hall, and he consumed every available hour practicing. Accompanied by the tinny sound of a CD in the background, he mimicked what he and Charles called masterpieces played on the instrument long ago. Clumsily at first, he eventually began to master the bow work and fingering. Which, not surprisingly, made sense, given that the masters depended mostly on their minds and fingers when they sat with orchestras in the halls. Or so he said.

“What is it you’re playing?” Lashawna asked one afternoon. He didn’t respond for some time, until she asked a second time.

“Dvorak. Cello Concerto. Third movement.” And then he flicked the rewind on the player, moving back to a spot in the concerto that seemed to enthrall him, and began again to practice until every note he played wed itself to the note on the disc. Day in and day out, much to Munster’s displeasure.

“Why doesn’t he play the Fender I grabbed last week?”

“Shut up, Munster,” Cynthia said to him that afternoon. “You have the musical tastes of an alley filled with tomcats.”

“Boring crap,” he muttered, leaving the room. I thought it was beautiful in its sad and melancholy way. Even Jack with her simpler tastes would sit for hours listening quietly, peacefully.

We needed that. Peace of mind. A diversion from the pain of losing Ash and Mari. Of being caught in a whirlpool of aloneness.

True to his word, or in Munster’s case, his threat, Charles made us gather each morning in the study after breakfast—oh how I missed the simple things, like bacon and eggs and toast. We sat for hours as he instructed us as best he could in algebra, geometry, science; history and literature in particular. Peter and Cynthia were attentive, but aside from the rudimentary study of science, Munster was most often elsewhere. I could hear him snoring softly sometimes, until Cynthia tired of listening to him, and woke him with an elbow in his ribs one morning.

“Do you intend to stay stupid your entire life?”

“I’m dreaming of you and me,” he poked back at her.

“Slob. That’ll be as far as you’ll ever get.”

During those days I often wondered at our future together. Would we eventually be struck by Cupid’s arrow? Certainly as time passed that would be inevitable, it seemed to me. We were, after all, human. Despite their present antipathy toward one another, the numerous and various barbs they cast, was it inconceivable that as both matured, the wall between them would crumble? Or would Munster begin to notice Lashawna? Or, God forbid, me. What of Peter, or maybe quiet and introspective Jerrick? Who would catch their eye? Charles…he was father to all of us, yet…these were strange and different times. I mentally paired each of us up. Some day, maybe far off, there would be children. If we survived. I thought about this a lot, and I ventured the guess that I wasn’t the only one who did.

In the quiet of the months that rolled by I began to listen closely to every word spoken, every burst of laughter, notice every movement of his body, every lifting of an eyebrow, every smile. Peter.

Sometimes late at night when the others had gone to bed, or sat engaged in conversation in the kitchen or living room, oblivious of our disappearance, I would find myself beside him outside. Quite often at the telescope searching for the ship just above the atmosphere, or just marveling at the stars. More often walking together through the orchard, talking about the past, the present, or…the future. Soon enough he began to search for my hand, and I gave it to him with a rush of excitement racing through me. For hour after hour we merely walked and talked in this way. I could see him in a way that I couldn’t see Munster or Jerrick, and certainly not Charles, twice any of our ages. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like with him. That conversation finally came up. The possibility of us. But Peter knew that the time wasn’t yet right, and despite a growing and overwhelming desire otherwise on my part, I had to agree. If nothing else, we shared a knowledge that time was on our side. On everyone’s side, save Charles’.

“Peter, there must be others like us out there, don’t you think? I mean, those brutes who appeared months ago. They survived. Surely others did, too,” I said to him one night as we sat beneath a tree deep inside the orchard, the moon shining in a clear, deep azure sky above us.

“I’m positive of it,” he answered in his beautiful, soft voice.

“We have to find them, don’t you think?”

“Why?”

“Because…because…I don’t know. Because they’re there, or might be, I suppose.”

He looked into my face questioningly. “We have all that we need right now. Right here. You and I…”

I felt as though my words betrayed us. I didn’t mean what he thought I did, though. Just that, well, if others were out there, wouldn’t we all want to know?

“I’m sorry. Honestly, I do have all that I need. You’re right. Who cares?”

 

I had fallen in love with him.

Life had taken on real meaning again.

Even so…

 

Change of Focus

 "It's time to plant," Charles announced one morning in March after class.

I thought it odd that Munster had stayed awake during the morning lessons and discussions lately, but he had. More astonishing was the way he agreed with his nemesis after she answered one of Charles’ questions, or dissed one of his comments.

“I think you’re right, Cyn. Now that I think of it. There weren’t no way wars ever solved our problems.”

“There was no way,” she’d berated his language skills. Softer, though, than what she’d usually throw in his face. I noticed the change occuring as spring set in. In fact, beyond the lightening of tension between them, she even joined him once or twice when he had had enough of the farm, and so sped off in his beloved sports car. I said nothing about his seeming change of character—such as it was—or the burial of the hatchet between them to anyone except Peter.

“Do you think he, you know, likes her?”

“Why wouldn’t he? She’s smart, unlike him, and she’s pretty. Maybe he simply wants to let her smack him around, and by agreeing with her, thinks that will make her hate him even more. Men are funny creatures.”

“You agree with me a lot.”

“That’s different.”

I couldn’t see how.

“She goes off with him in the Ferrari.”

“She likes the sun and the wind in her face.”

“I think you’re blinder than Jerrick.”

Peter chuckled, and then kissed me.

“Probably so.”

“Let’s follow them the next time they leave together.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. They go somewhere. What do they do when they’re away? Just drive up and down the highway?”

“Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

I was, but I lied. “I think they’re searching for others.” That was a conveniently safe answer.

“Please.”

Peter sighed as we walked that morning toward the garage filled with the seeds and fertilizer that would provide needed nourishment in the future. Ahead of us, Munster stayed a foot or two behind Cynthia, but there he was, sort of beside her. She was talking to Charles about something. He listened politely as they went along—his arm draped over Lashawna’s small shoulder in a most peculiar manner.

Maybe I just hadn’t noticed it before; maybe it was because the days were growing longer, warmer, and altogether more pleasant, and birds had returned from wherever their exodus had taken them last winter. Maybe it was because of the fact that we neither saw nor heard anything lately from the invaders. Maybe the change had simply needed time, a rest, and a moment of breath before it turned around and struck us? But there it was all around me, whatever the reason or reasons. I tightened my hold on Peter’s hand.

First inside the garage, Charles inconspicuously guided Lashawna to the hoes and rakes and shovels. Just beyond the hand tools, behind the pickup truck, stood the gleaming, small tractor Peter had put-putted all the way back from town a month ago. Nearby, the accessories that would turn it into a plow, harrow, scoop, and a myriad of other earth-tending tools that would take it from toy to real farm servant status.

“Do you think you can drive it, ‘Shawna?” he asked her with a smile larger than any I’d seen on his face since his arrival. She rubbed her fingers over the green cowl covering the engine, and beamed back at him.

“I think so.”

“Hop up onto the seat, then. I’ll help you get it out.”

We all watched, a little taken aback at the two of them. It should have been Peter or Munster that Charles directed onto the machine after all. Munster sidled closer to Cynthia. I heard him chuckle, noticed, too, that she leaned into him afterward and whispered something that made him burst out laughing.

Under Charles’ guidance, Lashawna started the engine, and then slowly began to back the tractor out, narrowly missing the fender of the truck, laughing. Charles leapt onto the seat, throwing his arms over her shoulders onto the steering wheel, cradling her back with his chest. Even from where I stood at Peter’s side, I could almost hear his heartbeat rising; feel it hammer into her small back. I lifted my eyebrows and peered up into Peter’s face as they slowly passed by. He grinned.

Good God, she’s not even my age yet!

The old world and all its conventions were long gone. There was no denying that. Still…maybe just a super-charged fatherly act of tenderness? Let me help you, daughter. Something told me that that was way not the case.

They putted down the gravel walkway beside the house, Lashawna laughing; Charles directing her, all aglow, making certain his hold on her was firm. Far beyond a simple fatherly attention.

“Well, well, well,” Cynthia remarked. “What have we here?”

“What’s going on?” Jerrick asked.

“Oh,